CHAPTER V.
THE REPLY.
“I don’t suppose he’ll ever get it.” For over a fortnight Eileen had been saying that. “If an answer doesn’t come to-morrow, I’ll say it’s gone astray. I didn’t think he’d get it from the moment we sent it.”
“Oh, nonsense, Eileen! We can’t expect an answer straight away,” answered Mollie.
“Straight away,” echoed Eileen. “I like your ‘straight away.’ It’s eighteen days since we posted the letter, and I’m just about sick of waiting. But I suppose there’s nothing else to do,” she added, disconsolately, as she kicked her heels against the verandah steps. “I’m sorry now that we wrote such a long letter. What we should have done was just to have written a very short note—just ‘Dear Uncle,—We are your five Bush Nieces, and we’re very poor, so please handy up some cash.—Yours respectfully,’ and then all our names. That’s what we ought to have done. But, anyhow, I suppose if he does come, the first thing he’ll want to do is to pack us off to school, to an old governess or to an old teacher of some sort. I suppose he’ll be like that big ‘Commercial’ that said we were raw.”
“That said we were what?” cried Mollie.
“Raw. I heard that big ‘Commercial,’ with the red shiny boots, who stayed here last week, say to that other traveller that we were raw material——”
“Raw material!” repeated Eva, in disgust. “What did he mean?”
“That we wanted schooling, I suppose,” said Eileen.
“Ugh!” said Eva, with her head in the air. “I’d rather be raw than be cooked looking like him. But where did he say it, and when and how?”
“Oh!” said Eileen, impatiently, “he said that we were nice children, but raw material, and it was a pity that we were running wild. That’s just what he said, and if you want to know what he meant you’d better write and ask him. I do hate saying word for word what people have said, and after today I’ll never do it again. I suppose Uncle will say the very same thing—that is, if he comes; and, of course, I don’t expect him. I don’t expect to ever hear another word about that old letter, and I expect to live here to the end of my days. I suppose I’ll just grow up and go into long dresses and put my hair up, and—and go on till I’m thirty and forty and fifty and sixty, and then die here, just working about a bit, and feeding lambs, and watching the shearing, and seeing the wool go away, and never go for a trip myself, and then die.”